The Touch (13 page)

This, Alexander thought, is what the roads to the fields in California must have looked like at the height of that gold rush. And how American it is! From stagecoach to wagons to the look of the people, frontier American. Yet in Sydney everyone I met was pretending to be English—not very successfully. How sad. This is just too far away to attract the non-British, so the city people have decided to cling to class-consciousness.

THE TOWN of Hill End was like all its brethren elsewhere: gouged, rutted streets that must be a mire in wet weather, the same shanties, huts, tents. It did, however, possess an imposing red-brick church and one or two other brick buildings, including one that announced it was the ROYAL HOTEL. Chinese abounded, some clad like coolies and sporting pigtails, others in British business suits and clipped hair beneath their bowlers. Several of the boarding houses were run by Chinese, also a number of shops and restaurants.

The air reverberated with familiar sounds: the maddening boom-boom-boom of battery stampers, the grating roar of crushers. The noise emanated from Hawkins Hill, where the reef gold lay—an ugly shambles of diggings, poppet heads, derricks and an occasional steam engine. Most of the claim owners, however, used horse power. It didn’t take him long to ascertain that this was no land of bounteous water; there could be no pressure-hosing the gold out of gravel banks here, for the river, a thin and shallow stream, was the only water available for all purposes. As for the wood—as hard as iron, he was told.

“Thankless fucken hard work. This is a fair cow of a place,” his informant summed up.

Very depressed, Alexander eyed the Royal Hotel and decided that it was not for him. Just off Clarke Street he saw a much smaller hotel of well-applied wattle-and-daub colored a pale pink, with a corrugated iron roof, an awning covering a boardwalk outside its door, a hitching rail and a horse trough. The sign said, in bright red letters, COSTEVAN’S. This will do fine, he said to himself, hitched the mare so that it could drink, and walked through the open front door.

At this hour most of the Hill End men were working their claims, so the cool, surprisingly elegant interior was almost deserted. A red cedar bar ran down one side wall and the big room held, besides the tables and chairs common to every saloon anywhere, a piano.

None of the half-dozen drinkers looked up, probably because they were too inebriated to do so. A woman stood behind the bar.

“Ahah!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “A Yank!”

“No, a Scot,” said Alexander, staring at her.

She was well worth staring at. A tall woman, she had a lush body nipped in at the waist by a corset, the top half of creamy breasts bursting out of the décolletage of her red silk dress, its brief sleeves slipped down to bare her magnificent shoulders. Her neck was long, her jawline remarkably clean cut, and the face above them was beautiful enough to be called stunning. Full lips, a short and straight nose, high cheekbones, a wide brow, and green eyes. He hadn’t thought that genuinely green eyes existed, but her eyes were genuinely green. The same color as a beryl or a peridot. The mass of hair that framed this ravishing face was a reddish-blonde, like pink gold.

“A Scot,” she said, “but a Scot who’s been in California.”

“Some years ago, yes. My name is Alexander Kinross.”

“I’m Ruby Costevan, and this”—she swept a shapely hand about—“is my place.”

“Do you have accommodation?”

“A few rooms out the back for those who can afford to pay a pound a night,” she said in a deep, slightly raspy voice whose accent was English-inflected New South Wales.

“I can afford to pay that, Mrs. Costevan.”

“Miss Costevan, but just call me Ruby. Everyone else does unless they happen to go to church on Sundays. The Bible-bashers call me scarlet, not ruby.” She grinned, displaying even white teeth and a dimple in either cheek.

“Are meals included in the tariff, Ruby?”

“Brekkie and dins, but not lunch.” She turned to the array of bottles. “What do you drink? I’ve got home-brewed beer on tap as well as hard stuff—Alex, or Alexander?”

“Alexander. Actually I’d rather have a cup of tea.”

Her eyes widened. “Jesus! You’re not a Bible-basher, are you? You can’t be!”

“I’m a child of the devil, but a fairly continent one. My consistent vice is a cheroot.”

“Ditto,” said Ruby. “Matilda! Dora!” she bawled.

When the two girls came through a door at the back of the saloon, Alexander suddenly understood one of the main functions of Costevan’s. They were young, pretty, and looked clean, but they were unmistakably whores.

“Yeah?” asked Matilda, who was dark.

“Take over the bar, there’s a good girl. Dora, go and ask Sam to make some afternoon tea for Mr. Kinross and me.”

The fair one nodded and vanished, Matilda manned the bar.

“Take the weight off your feet, Alexander,” said Ruby, arranging herself at what was probably the boss’s table, better grained and polished than the rest of the saloon furniture. She pulled a slim gold case from a pocket in the side of her skirt, opened it and offered it to Alexander. “Cheroot?”

“Tea first, thank you. I’ve swallowed a pound of dust.”

She lit one for herself, inhaled deeply and let the smoke trickle out through her nose. The thin, pale grey tendrils swam about her head, gave him the same kind of painful, gut-wrenching thrill he had sometimes experienced in Muslim lands when he met the kohl-rimmed eyes of some utterly alluring woman. They can smother them in all the veils they like, but there are women who can conquer any attempt at harness. Ruby is one such.

“Did you strike it lucky in California, Alexander?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. My two partners and I found a vein of gold-bearing quartz in the Sierra foothills.”

“Enough to be a rich man?”

“Moderately rich.”

“Didn’t piss it all away, eh?”

“I am nobody’s fool,” he said softly, black eyes flashing.

Startled, she began to say something, but at that moment the back door opened and a boy about eight years of age came out wheeling a cart on which stood a big teapot in a home-made cosy, a fine bone china tea set for two, an assortment of dainty little sandwiches and a cream sponge cake.

Ruby’s eyes had lit up at sight of the boy, who was the most unusually beautiful child Alexander had ever seen. Exotic, slim, graceful, immensely dignified and self-possessed.

“This is my son, Lee,” Ruby said, drawing the boy to her for a quick kiss. “Ta, my jade kitten. Say hello to Mr. Kinross.”

“Hello, Mr. Kinross,” said Lee, smiling Ruby’s smile.

“Now scoot. Go on, quick-smart!”

“So you have been married,” said Alexander.

Her pale brows lifted haughtily. “No, I have not. There’s no power on earth could make me marry anyone, Alexander Kinross—no power on earth! Put my neck under some man’s yoke? Hah! I’d sooner die!”

The violence of her answer didn’t really surprise him; he instinctively knew the important things about Ruby already. The independence. The pride in ownership. The contempt for virtuous citizens. But the boy was a puzzle: that dark beige skin, the way his green eyes were set in their orbits, the absolute black of his straight, glossy hair.

“Is Lee’s father Chinese?” he asked.

“Yes. Sung Chow. But he agreed that our son should be Lee Costevan, and that he be brought up British—provided that I make him a gentleman.” She poured the tea. “Sung Chow used to be my partner in this enterprise, but after Lee was born I bought him out. Oh, he’s still in Hill End, but he owns and runs a laundry, the brewery, and several boarding houses. We’re good friends.”

“Yet he consigned his son entirely to you?”

“Of course. Lee’s a half-caste, so he can’t be a Chinese. Sung sent to China for a wife as soon as he had the money, so he has two Chinese sons now. His brother, Sam Wong—Sung is the surname, but Wong decided to be Sam—is my overpaid cook, being the younger of the two Sungs. One of them has to go home to China to placate the ancestors, and that’s Sam. So he only takes half his wage, I bank the rest for him—the more he takes home, the greedier the relatives will be.” She snorted with laughter. “As for Sung—the only way he’s ever going home to China is as ashes in a gorgeous dragon-wreathed jar.”

“What do you hope for your son, then, if he’s to be reared a gentleman?” he asked, knowing the fate of bastards.

The lustrous eyes swam with sudden tears; she blinked them away. “I have it worked out, Alexander. In two more months he won’t be with me.” The tears gathered again, were mastered again. “I won’t see him for ten years. He’s going to a very exclusive private school in England. It’s a school that specializes in foreign pupils—the sons of pashas, rajahs, sultans, all sorts of Oriental potentates who want English-educated sons. So Lee won’t stand out, except that he’s hugely clever. You see, his school friends will be potentates themselves one day, all allied to the British Crown. They’ll be able to help Lee.”

“You’re asking a lot of a little boy, Ruby. How old is he, eight or nine?”

“Eight, soon nine.” She poured him a fourth cup of tea and leaned forward earnestly. “He understands his situation—the half-caste business, my society shortcomings—all of it. I’ve never concealed anything from him, but I’ve never let him become ashamed either. Lee and I face what we are with fortitude and a practical outlook. It’s going to kill me to live without him, but I will, for his sake. If I tried to send him to school in Sydney, or even in Melbourne, someone would find out. But no one will find out if he’s in a school for foreign royalty in England. Sung has a cousin, Wo Fat, who is to go with Lee as his servant and protector. They sail early in June.”

“It will be harder for him, even if he does understand.”

“Do you think I don’t know that? But because he understands, he will do it. For me.”

“Think of this, Ruby. When he’s grown-up, will he thank you for taking him away from his mummy at such a tender age to throw him into the lion’s den of an English public school? Surrounded by great wealth, aware that if his fellow pupils knew his real circumstances, they’d cut him dead—oh, Ruby, it has its dark side,” said Alexander, though why he was fighting so hard for a child he’d scarcely seen, he didn’t know. Only that something in the boy’s eyes, so different from Ruby’s in their soul’s reflection, had drawn him strongly.

“Persistent blighter, aren’t you?” She got up. “Have you a horse? If you do, there’s a stable in the backyard. Just take the beast down the lane and hand it over to Chan Hoi. Feed is expensive in Hill End, so a horse will cost you five bob extra a night. Matilda, take Mr. Kinross to the Blue Room. He deserves blue—he’s a cheerless bugger.” And off she went to the bar. “Dinner’s whenever you want it,” she said as he followed Matilda through the back door.

The Blue Room was indeed a rather depressing blue, but it was big and comfortably appointed. He got rid of the lingering Matilda by brushing past her and going to attend to his horse; the girl clearly had hopes of largesse for services rendered.

There was a bathroom two doors down from the Blue Room, as good, he suspected, as any bathroom in Hill End. The lavatory was an earthen pit in the backyard—no water closets in Hill End! Water was, beyond any doubt, Hill End’s most serious problem.

After a bath and a shave he lay down on the blue bed and slept deeply.

The noise awakened him: Costevan’s had come alive, which meant that most of the town’s miners had finished working. He lit the kerosene lamp, dressed in a fresh suit of skins, and went to find dinner. Wherever the whores did business, it was not in this wing housing the five paying guests Ruby could accommodate. When stabling his horse he had noted that the kitchen was a separate building to ensure that a kitchen fire wouldn’t burn the whole place down, and he had noted too that another wing branched off the main building opposite from his. She had an organized mind, did Ruby, as well as a ruthless one. That poor little boy!

The saloon was packed. Men stood three-deep along the bar, and every table except the boss’s was occupied. Matilda and Dora were flouncing about; so were three other girls. Presuming that he sat at the boss’s table to eat, he ensconced himself there to an accompaniment of many curious glances; most of the influx of customers were still fairly sober.

“I’m Maureen,” said a red-haired girl in green lace; she had more freckles than anyone Alexander had ever seen, and looked as if she was trying to get a smooth brown complexion by joining them up. “There’s roast leg of pork with crackling, roast spuds and boiled cabbage for dins, and a spotted dog with custard for pudden. If youse don’t fancy them, Sam can make something else.”

“No, they’ll do fine, thank you, Maureen,” he said. “I know Matilda and Dora, but who are the other two?”

“Therese is the one with the brown hair and cross-eyes, Agnes is the one with the tattoos on her arms.” Maureen giggled. “She used to work the sailors’ pubs at the Rocks in Sydney.”

So Ruby’s girls weren’t as clean as they looked. But, as he had no intention of purchasing their services—how much did they cost in Hill End?—he concentrated on devouring a really excellent meal. Sam Wong might be overpaid, but he certainly could cook. Maybe before he left he could coax Sam into making him some genuine Chinese food.

Ruby herself was behind the bar, so busy that all he got was a wave; he wondered if every saloon in Hill End was as well patronized as Costevan’s, and decided not. The five girls were doing a roaring trade, disappearing with a victim to reappear within scant minutes, only to find another victim waiting. Of course there had to be a constabulary in the town; presumably Ruby bribed to stay in business.

Stomach pleasantly full, he sat back in his chair to enjoy a cheroot and a cup of tea and watch the antics. Payment for a girl’s services, he noted, was made to Ruby beforehand.

Then, the drinkers mellow, Ruby moved to the piano. It stood just inside the entrance door and was angled so that whoever played it could be seen by the whole room. She arranged her skirts to free her feet, put her hands on the keys and began to play. Alexander stiffened, possessed by an absurd impulse to scream at the drinkers to pipe down and listen—she was so good! The music consisted of ordinary popular tunes, but she embellished them with complicated passages that said she was capable of doing justice to Beethoven or Brahms.